James A. Reed Wildlife Area.

April 24th
Me and my parents went to James A. Reed Memorial Wildlife Area. It was a beautiful day and I totally forgot that it would be colder at the lake so I ended up wearing one of  my dad's jackets; it was HUGE  on me but really warm :) We walked around a few lakes and then decided to walk a "trail" that we thought went around one of the  lakes. It did go around the lake but you couldn't  see the lake!We just kept walking in the soggy grass and eventually found out where we were. We weren't lost! It just wasn't what we expected. It was actually a horse trail ,and super muddy in some places; I slipped once and almost fell! NOT COOL! After that we went around a couple more lakes; then drove around the place to see the rest of the area, it's really big and has tons of lakes! Anyway it was a lot of fun and we got to see like five osprey, several herons, swallows, and cool ducks.

This is one of the barn swallows we saw in a field. I was surprised to see this one sitting, I hardly ever see them resting.

Great blue heron

I love how this one turned out!

 We saw two old oriole nests there.

Probably the best part was seeing osprey. I saw like five! Before I had only seen two osprey here in Missouri. It was awesome!

Northern shovelers ,first time seeing them! There were two pairs.

These are blue-winged teals. I saw a few on most of the lakes but I didn't expect to see a big group of them.